Nobody concentrates harder than old Chinese ladies

孙智谦 on 02 Apr 2008

 
I found the video below on blog.howma.com and had to post about it because of how awesome it is. Yeah, it’s pretty cool how well the guy in the video dances, but the real story is the old lady on the couch behind him…
 
If you had a guy in your living room wearing a suit coat with no shirt, pajama bottoms, and slippers, and he was dancing all up in ya face like MC Hammer, you’d probably laugh hysterically, right? Or you’d glance up once in a while to watch for a few seconds, right? At the very least, you’d giggle or something. I think most Westerners would. But not old Chinese ladies! The one in the video just keeps on knitting/sewing/doing-whatever-she’s-doing and pays absolutely no attention to the guy whatsoever. It’s like the he isn’t even in the room! I don’t think it’s possible to concentrate any harder than that. And that’s why if I ever find myself in a tag-team Operation competition, I’m taking an old Chinese lady as my partner.
 

 

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Is Magibon an android?

孙智谦 on 31 Mar 2008

 
Magibon's Inspiration or the other way around?
 
Ok, the picture above may not look like Magibon when you just see a still frame of it, but trust me when I say that this little flash cartoon’s mannerisms are eerily like Magibon’s when you see it in motion. So I wonder which one was the inspiration for the other. I’m feeling way too lazy to actually write an e-mail and find out, so you’ll have to do that yourself. But it’s definitely freaky how much alike they are. I wonder if Magibon is an android.
 

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Rain Vs. Stephen Colbert

孙智谦 on 28 Mar 2008

 
I never would’ve guessed it, but apparently Stephen Colbert and Korean pop star Rain have been battling for supremacy in the Korean pop scene for years. And based on the examples in the video below, I gotta say that Stephen Colbert has Rain beat hands down. He’s so much more manly and tough and a much better singer than Rain…
 

 

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Lee Hom, Jeong Hee, and Rain - Perfect Interaction

孙智谦 on 28 Mar 2008

 
Cross-genre music is awesome, but cross-cultural music is the best. Check out Perfect Interaction (完美的互動) by Wang Li Hong (a.k.a.: Wang Lee Hom), featuring Lim Jeong Hee and Rain (who isn’t actually IN the video for some reason). This song puts me in a good mood when I hear it. Love the sound, and their voices go together perfectly, which is I guess why the song is named what it is. A catchy song in 3 different languages with English subtitles in the upper left of the screen? I can’t ask for a much cooler video experience than that! It’s too bad there aren’t a lot more of these kinds of cross-cultural collaborations in music.
 

 

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Mariah Carey’s “Ken Lee”

孙智谦 on 24 Mar 2008

 
I hate American Idol and just about any other “Idol” show, especially the failed auditions. I hate seeing people who think they can sing make fools of themselves in front of a public audience. And I hate seeing people who can sing decently get severely criticized by stuck-up, arrogant judges. But this is pretty awesome. I’m not sure what the language is they’re speaking, but I think it’s Bulgarian? And that’s Eastern Europe, which is close to Asia, so there’s your connection. Plus, Ken Lee sounds like an Asian guy’s name.
 

 
Painfully funny, eh? Now I recognize that English isn’t her native language, but seriously…if you’re gonna try to sing a song in a foreign language for any kind of TV show, at least make sure you can properly pronounce the words, especially when they’re pronounced so clearly by the original singer. She gets an F for her overall performance and an A+ for inventing that awesome cockamamie dialect thing…
 

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Hey, Jealousy

孙智谦 on 21 Mar 2008

 
You know how when you were a kid you’d have these highly implausible fantasies about totally awesome things happening to you, and no matter how unlikely it actually was that those things would ever happen, somewhere deep down inside you thought they might some day? My fantasy when I was a kid was that I would be at my favorite band’s concert and then for whatever reason my thirteen-year-old mind could come up with, I would get invited up on stage to sing along with or instead of the singer of the band. I used to lie in bed at night and drift off to sleep imagining that kind of thing happening. But in the words of Noel Gallagher of Oasis, “While we’re living, the dreams we have as children fade away.” Reality eventually set in, and I realized that kind of thing doesn’t happen…unless you’re a Sammi Cheng fan in Singapore. Check out the video below:
 

 
Well, it’s pretty close to the fantasy, anyway. My Cantonese is horrible (read: all but nonexistent), but someone in the comments section on Youtube said something about Sammi making fun of the girl for being fat or not sexy (but in a good-natured way?!). Being called fat in front of thousands of people? That’d sting a bit, but it’s a small price to pay for being given the chance to live out a fantasy like that. The next time I’m at a Jay Chou concert (probably never), I’m bringing a poster that says, “Let me on stage to make a fool of myself in front of thousands!” or maybe just “Can I have Landy Wen’s phone number?”
 

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Japan is the weirdest place on earth, and that (mostly) rocks!

孙智谦 on 20 Mar 2008

 
Japan is totally weird
 
What the heck is up with Japan? How did it get to be so incredibly weird and hilariously amusing? What’s in the water there that makes Japanese people so concerned with showing just the right amount of deference to each other while at the same time whacking each other in the crotch with sticks on national TV? What is it that makes them the world leader in coming up with useless inventions (it’s an actual art)? What is it that makes them advertise using bizarre, pointless commercials? What makes them want to combine firearms and cartoons? Appointing cartoon ambassadors? Sexualizing noodles?! Ok, that one freaks me out, and it only scratches the surface of all the weird stuff going on in Japan in that area…no comment there.
 
I have no idea what the point of this post is (or anything I throw up on this site, really), other than to say that bizarre Japanese stuff is really cool (just not the weird sexual stuff - I’ll pass on that). If I hadn’t already invested so much time in learning Chinese, I’d probably have my face buried in a Japanese grammar book right now. Here’s a cool Japanese commercial:
 

 

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Paur McCarrney - Or a small Korean child sings Hey Jude

孙智谦 on 16 Mar 2008

 

 
This is pretty cute. Not as cute as the 3-year-old girl telling the story of Star Wars, but still cute. And it’s related to Asia, so you’ll watch it and you’ll like it. He can carry a tune pretty well for a child his age! I’ve included lyrics below, so feel free to sing along!
 
Hey Jude, don make eet bad.
Take a sad song and make it beh-urrr
Rerember to rerrerr into yer haaaar
Then you can staaarrrrr to mrake eet berrer
So rerrir owr an rerember to rerrerr into your haarr
*grunt*
Then you can staaar, hmm, hmm, to make eet beh-rer
hmm, hmm, Hey Jude, mhmmhmm, don mayafray, mhmm, mmh
You rere maydoo cole-owrt in keterr
Remember to rerrer into your har, mhmm, mmh,
Den you can staaar, hmm, hmm
To make eet berrer, berrer, berrer, beherr, beher, aaaaaaaah!!!
*cue awesome guitar solo* Na, na, na, na-na-ah-na, na-na-ah-na, Hey Jude
Do-Do-ee-dut-deh, naaa…
 

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The evolution of Indo-European languages

孙智谦 on 16 Mar 2008

 
Language Origins Map
Click here for a larger image (sorry, nothing hi-res).
 
Here’s something cool I recently came across in my web surfing. I’ve always found it really interesting to learn exactly how the languages we speak today evolved from earlier forms, so when I found this chart online, I thought I had come across the coolest thing ever…until I realized that it was only a chart of the origins of Indo-European languages and didn’t cover Southeast Asia at all. Poop. Still, it’s pretty interesting, so I thought I’d share it here. Enjoy!
 

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Cutest. Kid. Ever.

孙智谦 on 26 Feb 2008

 

 
This has absolutely nothing to do with Asia, but it’s too entertaining not to post. It’s an adorable little three-year-old girl sort of giving a synopsis of Episode IV of Star Wars (that’s the original Star Wars for you non-geeks). Comments from the author below:
From www.fistofblog.com

Here is my daughter, age 3, explaining the plot of Star Wars Episode IV.

She explained the whole movie to me in much greater detail but unfortunately I didn’t have the camera going. When I finally caught her talking about the movie again she delivered this truncated, but still funny, version.

Edit: Thank you all for the nice comments. Maybe I will print them out for her and someday and when she’s all growed up she’ll get to read them herself.

A little more about the video: She wasn’t coached to say anything, nor was she forced to make the video. She rarely stops talking. Those of you with children understand this: sometimes it’s harder to turn the faucet off than to turn the faucet on.

Believe it or not, she has the seem the movie only once, and I spread it out over 3 days so it wouldn’t be too much all at once for her.

The video was edited to make it shorter, more cohesive and hopefully funnier. I did move some of the lines around so it would make more sense.

Please visit the mother blog at www.fistofblog.com.

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